A GROUP of friends cycling spotted Luke Mitchell on the day Jodi Jones died, on a road that passes the entrance to the path where her body was found, a court heard yesterday.
Teenagers Andrew Holburn, Dean Houston and Grant Elliot said they saw Mr Mitchell at times after the schoolgirl was said to have left her home for the last time.
Mr Mitchell, 16, Jodi's boy-friend, is accused of murdering the 14-year-old on June 30 last year near Roan's Dyke, between the Newbattle and Easthouses areas of Dalkeith, Midlothian.
The accused, who was 14 at the time Jodi died, denies the charge and has lodged two special defences, one of alibi and one of incrimination.
Mr Holburn, 18, a photography student, told the court he and his friends were cycling on Newbattle Road towards the Jewel and Esk College in the evening of Monday June 30.
He said they saw Mr Mitchell standing at an entrance to a driveway before Newbattle Abbey Crescent, where the accused lived. He said they would have cycled past at about 5.55pm or 6pm.
The witness said he saw a young man, whom he did not recognise, standing at a break in a wall. Mr Holburn asked his friends, who attend St David's High School in Dalkeith, who the young man was.
''What was the answer?'' he was asked in court. ''Luke Mitchell,'' the witness replied.
Grant Elliot and Dean Houston, both 15, confirmed to the court that they had seen Mr Mitchell on that evening in June. All three identified the accused in the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Dean said that he occasionally cycled to school with Mr Mitchell, and Grant said the accused was still standing at the same spot as he made his return journey home some 20 minutes to half-an-hour later.
Carol Heatlie, 46, a Scottish Executive employee, said that a youth caught her eye as she drove down Newbattle Road at about 6.05pm on June 30.
She later saw pictures of Mr Mitchell in the newspaper and a TV interview with him, the court heard. She said she recognised the images as ''very, very similar'' to the youth.
Asked whether she recognised him in court, Mrs Heatlie looked towards Mr Mitchell and said he was ''similar''.
The trial continues.
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